11 Comments

I resented having to sit through MASTER GARDENER a second time (I originally saw it last year) before filing my review in the Ty Burr Memorial Movie Review Column. I found it a pathetic attempt by a filmmaker whose ability to provoke needs some B12 shots and a Viagra. My grade of one star was generous. (It was for Sigourney Weaver, who managed to bring some fury to that hideous dialogue she was forced to utter.)

That I saw this and ARMAGEDDON TIME at the same festival just goes to show you that I have done some bad things that deserve punishment by the vengeful God of cinema. Also: I got yelled at by an obviously near-sighted reader over a piece YOU wrote. I'm not taking your ass whippings for you, Ty Burr. You're not my little brother!

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I hate to be a nit-picker, but I don't recall Travis Bickle being IN Raging Bull! "I think Travis Bickle ('nam vet) would have at most been an infant when Jake LaMOtta was slugging his way to the top. To me, it might well be interesting to combing Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, but so far, it hasn't opened. I must go program my tivo, though to get the Spencer/Hepburn flick as I so love Adams Rib and Pat and Mike. Which brings up my annoyance with TCM: unlike the rest of the cable movie showing world, even though yes, they do run the same movies over and over (but months apart) they DON'T have more than one show....I channel surf into they have on, and: it's NOT showing again later in the week so that I can actually watch it from the beginning.

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Travis Bickle was the protagonist in “Taxi Driver,” not “Raging Bull.”

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You're correct that Paul Schrader originally wrote the character 'Travis Bickle'. But it was in his screenplay for 'Taxi Driver' and not 'Raging Bull' as you stated in your 'Master Gardener' review. I'm sure you know this but had a momentary memory lapse. I couldn't let this tiny error pass because (full disclosure) I worked on the camera crew of 'Raging Bull' back in 1979. De Niro was at full throttle as Jake LaMotta with the Travis Bickle character already four years back in his rear-view mirror.

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